I don't know if it's him or the new items, just played against him and his abilities feel like they hit much harder and his ultimate... I'm not going to even talk about that because all I can say is that it wrecks in team fights.

I had an 81% win rate with Ryze before the s3 prepatch and 76% right now and I am fully confident in the statement that I have only lost my own lane twice.

all in all the strengths of Ryze lies in his ability to bulk up with frozen heart, rod of ages & banshee's veil and still output the same amounts of damage as any burst caster granted the enemy team isn't stacking mr. if they are you have to make a decision wether to sacrifice a slot for the void staff or just go even tankier. Ryze literally becomes an AP bruiser capable of the same single target damage as orianna and has a relatively high dps.

either you commit fully to killing Ryze or he's very likely to just spell vamp back up again, especially with builds including revolver.

sitting at +90 armor from frozen heart, +2050 mana from fh/archangel/roa you have about 3500 mana to use from just those items at lvl 18, the only item you stereotypically get on Ryze to get higher mana is banshee's veil which also makes you a lot harder to engage on! assuming you start a fight topped up you will be able to get a 700-800 shield off from seraph's embrace by JUST having those three items + max level. you also get + 220 damage on Q JUST from your mana landing at about 400 damage with the mana bonus and an additional 98 damage from ap with those three items landing your Q at about 500 damage.

now remember due to the way Ryze and his passive works he can always Q-W-Q-E-Q pretty much instantly (if you don't smartcast Ryze you're losing out on so much damage I weep for you) leading to 500x3 + W damage which I can't be arsed to calculate right now but it's higher than Q and E has the potential to do a tremendous amount of damage with desperate power activated.

all in all Ryze has tremendous single target damage and is incredibly tanky due to his item builds AND he can forgo an offensive mastery build and just stack up on the cdr & spell vamp the utility tree offers. he can literally go man mode if he's not being focused down (i.e you're not the only threat on your team) and wipe out an entire team.

the huge problem with Ryze being of course that he's so item reliant if you don't farm well or if you're far behind then you're not going to be doing much at all.

Seems that if he gets even a tiny bit ahead, he is nearly impossible to handle without focusing him down as a team. This is obviously a problem because he becomes so insanely hard to kill with his regular build plus ultimate up, and all he has to do is spam his combos. Keeps him alive AND murders your entire team. All the while the rest of his team is free to do whatever they please as you pretty much HAVE to commit to killing Ryze, you can't leave him alone.

Ryze is really strong right now I feel, but I don't know if he is OP, at least not in the way Olaf and Kha'zix can be. But he is pretty much the AP version of a hypercarry.

Usually you would want to throw out your E first (in my opinion) because it reduces MR on the targets to add a little bit of extra damage.

I have also been trying Frozen Fist over Frozen Heart and I like it. It has 100 extra mana and a little bit of AP. It is 30 less armor and 5% less CDR, then obviously you would have to decide if your team needs the FH passive or if someone else on the team has it.

Ryze is really strong right now I feel, but I don't know if he is OP, at least not in the way Olaf and Kha'zix can be. But he is pretty much the AP version of a hypercarry.

Usually you would want to throw out your E first (in my opinion) because it reduces MR on the targets to add a little bit of extra damage.

I have also been trying Frozen Fist over Frozen Heart and I like it. It has 100 extra mana and a little bit of AP. It is 30 less armor and 5% less CDR, then obviously you would have to decide if your team needs the FH passive or if someone else on the team has it.

Such a waste. The reduced armor and CDR alone makes FH a better choice, nevermind that FH passive is the absolute best item in-game to counter AA-Reliant characters; which most are.

hm... Ryze has it easier than most mages vs bruisers and assasins due to how tanky he builds. An early tear looks fantastic but if you have a hard lane and need power right now, you can always get the catalyst and glacial shroud first. Before you start flaming me for this think about it. You will delay your late game power but tear offers nearly nothing instantly and if you cant survive/farm in your lane, you wont be able to stack your tear and get other items.

@FH vs Gauntlet: Both are viable items. Just pick whatever you need against the enemy team. FH should be the better item in most situations due to the current meta but there still are games with double AP and a weak AD where the bonus armor wont do a lot and the bonus damage+slow would be amazing.

One thing I really like about ryze that you can build quite a lot of different items. Glascannon, Tanky, Spellpen etc.

I get this distinct feeling you don't play a lot of Ryze nor see a lot of Ryze being played.

Ryze is really only weak against long range poke champions i.e Lux, Ahri etc, DEFINITELY not ad bruisers/assassins mid. those are the ones you pick Ryze vs as he stacks armor & hp through FH & RoA as his STANDARD build and Ryze wants people to get close enough for him to hurt them.

Ryze is very easy to play, but i've seen so many ppl fail playing with him at least from my point of view.
I don't think Ryze is OP. He is a lategame ap carry involving around having high cooldown reduction and alot of mana. They did balance him out a while back where they reduced the range of his Q and W and also lowered the mana ratio because the tank items gave too much damage.

But of course he does alot of damage since I said before he is a lategame champ but can excell very good with only tears and RoA with a blue buff due to the cd reduction. If you execute it well you can dominate the mid-game entirely.

I get this distinct feeling you don't play a lot of Ryze nor see a lot of Ryze being played.

Ryze is really only weak against long range poke champions i.e Lux, Ahri etc, DEFINITELY not ad bruisers/assassins mid. those are the ones you pick Ryze vs as he stacks armor & hp through FH & RoA as his STANDARD build and Ryze wants people to get close enough for him to hurt them.

I was talking about lane phase. How often do you see a ryze with a finished FH in lane phase? Also not talking high elo play here, as the majority are not there.

I was talking about lane phase. How often do you see a ryze with a finished FH in lane phase? Also not talking high elo play here, as the majority are not there.

Try going wukong against him for example if you really doubt it.

well Wukong isn't a bruiser without items. no bruiser is a bruiser without items. ap casters scale from levels bruisers from items mainly (irelia attack speed to maximise her true damage etc).

no matter how you look at it Ryze negates the idea that a bruiser is any good vs him seeing as the first thing Ryze does after getting his tear is going tanky through hp and then probably through armor with fh. Ryze will out trade most bruisers in short engages (if you're thinking about using Wukong skill harass) early in the game until they can themselves itemize vs ap damage. he can disengage by simply using prison thus making the engages artifically short.

low elo play or high elo play, his itemization directly makes him unable to get rolled by ALL ad bruiser builds except true/magic damage champions (irelia, ww etc).

Wukong excels at winning mid against squishies that can't deal with his harass - Ryze can. he IS an ap bruiser just like Rumble with a different itemization and can also play top against a lot of matchups.

once again there is only ONE hard counter to Ryze and that is poke champions/champions that can push. Ryze can farm effectively under the turret but he can't shove a wave without his ult.

I play a lot of Ryze, I would know what counters him or not.
arguing that Wukong is strong vs Ryze at low elo is arguing that the Ryze player is bad and the Wukong player is mediocre or better.
Wukong is strong in that sense because the other player doesn't know how to play vs him. This has nothing to do with the champion Wukong is playing against but rather the inability of the player playing Wukong's match up.